You may often come across a cooler with very impressive features that will not prove too efficient and doesn’t justify its price. But, luckily, it is also quite often that things are the other way around: not very sophisticated coolers demonstrate surprising results. Today we are about to experience a surprise like that.

Conclusion

It happens pretty rarely that two new CPU cooling solutions both demonstrate superb results in the same test session. The less efficient cooler of the two new solutions tested today, Thermaltake TMG IA1 lost only 5°C peak temperature to the super-cooler rival. While the best cooler, Scythe Kama Angle, yielded only 3°C and 10MHz in maximum processor frequency. Keeping in mind that these two new coolers are relatively inexpensive, have very simple installation, boast minimal dependence of their efficiency on the fan rotation speed, and generate little noise at minimal fan rotation speed, things may get really complicated in a little while.

Nevertheless, there are still a few things about these two coolers that I would like to comment on. Although both companies have very efficient thermal compound in their product range, the today’s new cooling solutions come bundled with SilMORE thermal grease. I don’t think that putting in a 1g pack of Thermaltake TG1/TG2 or Scythe Thermal Elixer will affect the cooler price. LGA775 retention that was inconvenient to use and unreliable, and also didn’t prevent the PCB from bending because of the cooler weight. Moreover, there was no LGA1366 kit bundled with the cooler.

So, Thermaltake TMG IA1 loses a few points for the uneven base surface and inconvenient fan rotation speed controller. As for Scythe Kama Angle, they used thermal glue instead of soldering technique, didn’t make any heatpipe grooves in the base plate, and didn’t provide enough fan retention wire clips. In my opinion, the latest cooler with soldered and non-flattened heatpipes lying in the special grooves of the base plate, with the triangle part of the cooler heatsink covered for better airflow organization and equipped with three regular fans, will be able to compete against ThermoLab BARAM in the most acute quiet mode… It is up to Scythe to decide if they are going to roll out the next Kama Angle revision any time soon, but at this point, the choice is totally yours.